Species ca. 30 (3 in the flora): North America, Eurasia; temperate areas.

Hylotelephium has usually been treated as a section or subgenus of the polymorphic and, as now understood, polyphyletic genus Sedum. From Sedum as redefined by H. ’t Hart (1995) these species differ in their distinct and basally attenuate pistils; in general, they differ further in having tall, leafy annual floral stems from an underground tuberous base, very broad and thin leaves, corymbose cymes, and stems dying back in winter to a tuberous base (H. Ohba 1977).

The vascular structure of flowers of this group were found by M. W. Quimby (1939) to be more primitive than in Sedum, having six distinct whorls of vascular traces from stele to appendages. In the distinctive Hylotelephium anacampseros Linnaeus of southern Europe, H. ’t Hart (1985) found only four whorls of traces and found evidence that this pattern derived from that of Hylotelephium and was independent of patterns in Sedum.